THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS.--HIS TESTIMONY SUMMED UP.
From all this it is clear that Justin had not only seen and reverenced
St. John's Gospel, but that his mind was permeated with its peculiar
teaching.
I hesitate not to say that, if a man rejects the evidence above adduced,
he rejects it because on other grounds he is determined, cost what it
may, to discredit the Fourth Gospel.
Let us briefly recapitulate.
Justin reproduced the doctrine of the Logos, using the words of St.
John. He asserted the Divine and human natures of the Son of God in the
words of St. John, or in exactly similar words. He reproduced that
peculiar teaching of our Lord, to be found only in St. John, whereby we
are enabled to hold the true and essential Godhead of Christ without for
a moment holding that He is an independent God. He reproduced the
doctrine of the Logos being, even before His Incarnation, in _every_ man
as the "true light" to enlighten him.
He reproduces the doctrine of the Sacraments in terms to be found only
in the Fourth Gospel. He reproduces, or alludes to, arguments and types
and prophecies and historical events, only to be found in St. John's
Gospel.
It seems certain, then, that if Justin was acquainted with any one of
our four Gospels, that Gospel was the one according to St. John.
What answer, the reader will ask, does the author of "Supernatural
Religion" give to all this? Why, he simply ignores the greater part of
these references (we trust through ignorance of their existence), and
takes notice of some three or four, in which, to use the vulgar
expression, he picks holes, by drawing attention to discrepancies of
language or application, and dogmatically pronounces that Justin could
not have known the fourth Gospel.
Well, then, the reader will ask, from whom did Justin derive the
knowledge of doctrines and facts so closely resembling those contained
in St. John?
Again, we have reference to supposed older sources of information which
have perished. With respect to the Logos doctrine, the author of
"Supernatural Religion" asserts:--
"His [Justin's] doctrine of the Logos is precisely that of Philo,
and of writings long antecedent to the fourth Gospel, and there can
be no doubt, we think, that it was derived from them."
("Supernatural Religion," vol. ii. p. 297.)
It may be well here to remark that, strictly speaking, there is no Logos
_doctrine_ in St. John's Gospel,--by doctrine meaning "scientifically
expressed doctrine," drawn out, and expounded at length, as in Philo.
The Gospel commences with the assertion that the Logos, Whoever He be,
is God, and is the pre-existent Divine nature of Jesus; he does this
once and once only, and never recurs to it afterwards.
The next passage referred to is the assertion of the Baptist, "I am not
the Christ," and the conclusion of the author is that "There is every
reason to believe that he derived it from a particular Gospel, in all
probability the Gospel according to the Hebrews, different from ours."
(Vol. ii. p. 302.)
The last place noticed is Justin's reproduction of John iii. 3-5, in
connection with the institution of baptism. After discussing this at
some length, for the purpose of magnifying the differences and
minimizing the resemblances, his conclusion is:--
"As both the Clementines and Justin made use of the Gospel according
to Hebrews, the most competent critics have, with reason, adopted
the conclusion that the passage we are discussing was derived from
that Gospel; at any rate it cannot for a moment he maintained as a
quotation from our fourth Gospel, and it is of no value as evidence
for its existence." ("Supernatural Religion," vol. ii. p. 313.)
We have now tolerably full means of judging what a wonderful Gospel this
Gospel to the Hebrews must have been, and what a loss the Church has
sustained by its extinction.
Here was a Gospel which contained a harmony of the history, moral
teaching, and doctrine of all the four. As we have seen, it contained an
account of the miraculous Birth and Infancy, embodying in one narrative
the facts contained in the first and third Gospels. It contained a
narrative of the events preceding and attending our Lord's Death, far
fuller and more complete than that of any single Gospel in the Canon. It
contained a record of the teaching of Christ, similar to our present
Sermon on the Mount, embodying the teaching scattered up and down in all
parts of SS. Matthew and Luke, and in addition to all this it embodied
the very peculiar tradition, both in respect of doctrine and of history,
of the fourth Gospel.
How could it possibly have happened that a record of the highest value,
on account both of its fulness and extreme antiquity, should have
perished, and have been superseded by four later and utterly unauthentic
productions, one its junior by at least 120 years, and each one of these
deriving from it only a part of its teaching; the first three, for no
conceivable reason, rejecting all that peculiar doctrine now called
Johannean, and the fourth confining itself to reproducing this so-called
Johannean element and this alone? It is only necessary to state this to
show the utter absurdity of the author's hypothesis.
But the marvel is that a person assuming such airs of penetration and
research [63:1] should not have perceived that, if he has proved his
point, he has simply strengthened the evidence for the supernatural, for
he has proved the existence of a fifth Gospel, far older and fuller than
any we now possess, witnessing to the supernatural Birth, Life, Death,
and Resurrection of Jesus.
The author strives to undermine the evidence for the authenticity of our
present Gospels for an avowedly dogmatic purpose. He believes in the
dogma of the impossibility of the supernatural; he must, for this
purpose, discredit the witness of the four, and he would fain do this by
conjuring up the ghost of a defunct Gospel, a Gospel which turns out to
be far more emphatic in its testimony to the supernatural and the
dogmatic than any of the four existing ones, and so the author of this
pretentious book seems to have answered himself. His own witnesses prove
that from the first there has been but one account of Jesus of Nazareth.